Good news everybody, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the Ten Commandments monument must be removed from the state Capitol, saying it violates the Constitution, which bans using public property for the benefit of religion.

Before the statue was installed in 2012 as a gift from Republican state lawmaker Mike Ritze and his family, legislators argued that it was not religious, but historic. Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a similar monument in Texas did not violate the establishment clause because it was intended to convey a historic and social meaning and did not constitute a religious endorsement.

The 6-foot-tall monument’s installation prompted other groups, from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to Satanists, to try to get permission to build their own monuments on the grounds of the state Capitol to mark what they also characterize as historical events.

Big thanks to all the Pastafarians in Oklahoma pushing for equality and the ACLU for doing the tedious work of fighting this case in court.

And the Satanists did a tremendous job of bringing attention to this issue, not to mention that their monument was a work of art:

The statue features the seven-foot tall, horned figure of Baphomet fawned upon by two exultant children. The statue is a symbol to “celebrate our progress as a pluralistic nation founded on secular law.”

I’m sure it won’t be long before this stuff is in the courts again:

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt vowed to file a petition for a rehearing, saying that “the court completely ignored the profound historical impact of the Ten Commandments on the foundation of Western law,” according to local reports.

It’s too bad that these guys are so bent on pushing religion. I feel like there must be something more beneficial to the public they could be spending their time on.

Wearing Official Pastafarian headgear and standing up for his rights, Ian Harris.

In Wales, UK, Ian Harris wants to wear a Colander – our religious headgear – in his driver’s license photo. The licensing authority said no because they don’t view ours as a serious religion. They do allow Yarmulkes and Hijabs, though. It would appear that our headgear meets all of the agency’s guidelines, and yet they turned Mr. Harris away.

I find it odd that an licensing agency would allow themselves to get into the messy business of qualifying the relative legitimacy of religious fashion accessories. Our Colander is no more obtrusive than many allowed headgear items and yet all over the world, our members have often found themselves turned away.

Mr Harris is organizing a Pastafarian rally in protest of this injustice this upcoming weekend in Brighton (UK).

Thank you, Mr. Harris, for having the courage to stand up for your right to religious expression.

From the Wales Online article:

Mr Harris plans to take to the streets of Brighton this Sunday to battle for his “right” to wear the metal bowl on his photo-licence, and he has called on Pastafarians across the UK to hold protests in their home areas.

Mr Harris, whose four-year-old daughter Astri is a Pastafarian, maintains that wearing a colander is the equivalent to Muslim women wearing hijabs, or Jewish men wearing skullcaps.

He said: “They (the DVLA) are not backing down about my religious exemption. No matter how much my religion is a minority religion I have a deeply held belief and I should have an exemption or otherwise there should be no exemption at all.

“They wrote to me saying my religion wasn’t serious enough but if Christians talk of speaking snakes and a virgin birth in this era of modern medicine, then why isn’t mine?

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has applied to the Victorian Department of Education and Training for approval to “spread the word” in schools through the Special Religious Instruction program.

Department spokesman Stuart Teather confirmed correspondence had been received and it “will be considered”.

I think this is great. The Victorian Department of Education deserves a lot of credit for taking the request seriously.

Cynics might see this all as a way to make a point that religion has no place in schools, that having Pastafarians Spread the Word while dressed in Pirate Regalia to a bunch of kids will be such a ridiculous sight as to make administrators re-think the policy of allowing religious teaching in schools … but I am confident that the kids are going to get some quality information from us. At the very least we’ll be able to counter some misinformation in the secular curriculum. Such as:

* that pirates were unruly criminals
* that the world is older than 10k years despite the “evidence” to the contrary

What should we cover on our lessons? I feel like maybe we should tone down any teaching about Beer Volcano and Stripper Factory, as these are impressionable youths we’re educating.

Now I’m curious what has been allowed previously in this Special Religious Instruction program.

Here’s an article just published on CNN about the changing attitudes towards atheists. It’s a pretty good read, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is mentioned a bunch. Read here

I supposed that in time, more and more supposed “atheists” and “non-believers” will feel more free to talk about their Belief in the FSM. I completely understand why some of us say we see FSM as satire. But times are changing.

PRI has a story about Pastafarian minister Bruder Spaghettus and his struggle for the recognition of Pastafarianism in Germany.

He [Bruder] is convinced that religion holds a privileged place in German society and that non-believers lack the same civil rights.

Weida is a 63-year-old retiree who lives in the town of Templin. It’s about an hour’s drive outside of Berlin and happens to be Angela Merkel’s hometown. Templin is also where Weida founded the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” in September last year. As one of the leading “Pastafarians” at the church, or non-church more accurately, Weida goes by the alias of “Bruder Spaghettus.”

Weekly “Noodle Worship” begins at 10 a.m. Fridays in a small building on Weida’s farmstead on the outskirts of town. It looks and feels somewhat like weekly worship services at mainstream Christian churches. There is an altar, time for prayers, scripture readings, hymns, and even a version of Holy Communion. But the similarities end pretty quickly.

It’s a good article, but I find it a bit slanted in terms of calling us Atheists, not Believers in the FSM, and referring to Pastafarianism as a non-religion. When I see these tactics, I wonder if the writer does it purposely, as a means to get the article published. Still an interesting read.

Pastafarian Minister Dan Scott spotted a couple of campus ministers preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ (in a less than tolerant tone) in front of the University of Houston, so he decided to do some evangelizing on behalf of the FSM. Judging by their faces this looks to have been a great success in church-to-church interaction.

As the world continues to reel from the vicious terrorist attack that left 12 dead at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, for some in the West the inevitable finger pointing and blame game has already begun. In one corner, right-wing blowhards attempt to smear the entire Muslim faith of over 1 billion people with the heinous acts of two fanatics. While in another corner, politically-correct ninnies minimize the horrible killing of these writers and cartoonists by referencing the paper’s history of “xenophobia, racism, sexism, and homophobia” and claiming the publication somehow “provoked” the violence from Islamic extremists.

Both of these reactions are an affront to civil society. We cannot blame the whole of the followers of Islam for the actions of a group of marginalized individuals. Painting with this broad-brush point of view is a major contributor to the ease with which an entire society can label Muslims as “the other”. It’s this mentality that helps support military imperialism and the wholesale torture and killing of people in far off countries. The second mind-set, one that would explain away the barbaric nature of these killings by limiting freedom of speech, takes away one of our most potent defenses against fanaticism on all sides of the spectrum: Humor and Satire.

What do I think about the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks and the aftermath?

I’ve been trying to stay out of it until the noise dies down. I hear a lot of voices saying what’s obvious and true: this was a sad, terrible act done by some extremists; this is a predictable outcome of blind, extreme faith; the few extreme members don’t represent the whole of any group.

One thing I believe: it is the groups who feel their beliefs are above criticism who are in need of being deflated a bit with humorous satire. This idea that some beliefs can’t be questioned is a cancer. But let’s please try to confront it in a positive way.

There was a great interview on NPR this week with a man who has reversed his radical views and is now fighting against the underlying causes of extremism. He makes the point that in Islam there is a core belief, even amongst many moderate members, that the prophet Muhhammad can not be criticized or joked about, and that this is at odds with modern democratic society where we demand the right to poke at our institutions/leaders/beliefs. Definitely worth listening to if you’ve got 30mins. Here’s the link: How Orwell’s Animal Farm Led A Radical Muslim to Moderation.

1. Side note — Early FSM people may remember J.T. Eberhard from the Missouri Pastafarians group. I was always a fan of his — one of my favorite things he did was building a box-fort in the middle of campus as a statement about religious discrimination.

[1] A note on Holiday: some years ago we noticed there was a shift in the way people expressed greetings this time of year — less and less Merry Christmas and more and more Happy holidays. We concluded that these people were probably Pastafarians wishing people a happy Holiday – referring to our winter celebration also known as FSMas.

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An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American